Chosen in Dragonfire

Lyra

"Lyra Walker."

The herald's voice cut across the square like a blade, and my own name turned my legs to water. He was reading from a long roll of parchment. The tribute list. The names of the girls the Dragon King would take this year.

I knew what that list meant. Every five years, the Dragon Court chose unmarried girls from the human towns. They were called brides. They were called offerings. They were called many gentle things. But none of them ever came home.

I forced myself to keep walking.

The market noise blurred. A woman behind me whispered a prayer. A child clutched her mother's skirt. I kept my chin up and my hands by my sides, the way my mother had taught me before she died. Don't show fear in the open street. Don't give them anything to laugh at.

I had until sundown.

That was the law. A girl on the tribute list could be excused if she was already wed by the time the dragon's carriage arrived. I was engaged to Ethan Crowell. The promise had been made when I was four years old, in our garden, with daisies in my hair.

We'd marry today. He'd kept saying we should wait — for the right house, the right harvest — but no season would ever be more right than this one. Today the wedding would save my life.

I broke into a run.

I cut through the alley behind the smith's shop, my skirt catching on a nail. Halfway up the lane I tripped on a loose stone and went down hard. My knee split open on the gravel.

I didn't feel it.

I got up and ran the rest of the way with blood streaking down my shin.

The Crowell front door was open. That should have been the first sign. The Crowells never left their door open.

I crossed the threshold, gasping. "Ethan."

He was standing by the window. He turned when he heard me, and his face went still. Not surprised. Not happy. Just still, like a man who'd been waiting for something he didn't want to do.

"Lyra," he said.

"My name is on the list." The words came out wrong, all in a rush. "It happened this morning. The herald just read it. We have until sundown — we have to go to the priest — Ethan, we have to go now."

He didn't move.

"Ethan."

"Lyra." He swallowed. He had a way of swallowing before he lied; I'd seen it a thousand times and never once let myself name it. "I can't."

I laughed. It was the wrong sound. "What?"

"I can't marry you today."

My stomach went cold while my face went hot. Two different kinds of fever in two parts of my body. I waited for the punchline. He had a hundred bad jokes, and I waited for him to grin and say of course we would, of course, get your veil, you idiot, get in the carriage.

He didn't grin.

"You're joking," I said.

"I'm not."

"Ethan. They will kill me."

A door opened behind him, and my stepsister Delilah walked into the room.

She was wearing a pale yellow dress I'd never seen before. Her hand rested on her stomach. The fabric draped over a curve I'd been too distracted to look for, but now that I was looking, I couldn't see anything else.

"He isn't joking, Lyra," she said. She sounded almost kind.

I stopped breathing.

"I'm three months along," she said. "He won't let his child be a bastard. You understand."

The room got very quiet. The kind of quiet that hummed.

Three months. Three months ago Ethan and I had been picking apples in his mother's orchard. Three months ago he had told me I was the only girl he'd ever wanted. Three months ago I had been sitting in his lap, laughing about my father's terrible singing voice.

"It was an accident," Ethan said quickly. "Lyra, listen to me. It was just one night, I swear it, I love you—"

"Don't."

I didn't recognize my own voice.

My heart felt like it was breaking in two pieces. I had loved this man for sixteen years.

He knew Delilah. He had known since we were children which of us I hated. He chose her anyway. And he could not marry me because of his child, but he could send me to a dragon to die.

I would not cry. Not in front of Delilah.

"I'm telling my father," I said. The words came out flat.

Delilah laughed.

It was a small, ugly laugh. The laugh of a girl who had been waiting a long time to make a particular sound. "Oh, Lyra," she said. "Father already knows."

I looked at her.

"He's known for months. Why do you think he never stopped us?"

I turned and walked out of the Crowell house. I do not remember the door. I do not remember the lane. I remember only my knee, throbbing for the first time, and a stupid worried thought about the blood staining Mother's good petticoat.

My father was in his study.

He looked up when I came in. He did not stand.

"Father." My voice was steadier than my hands. "Tell me Delilah is lying."

He did not say anything.

I felt something inside me break very quietly.

"How long?" I said.

"Lyra—"

"How long have you known about Ethan and Delilah?"

He set down his pen. He folded his hands on his desk. They had once held mine when I was small enough to fit in the crook of his arm.

"Long enough," he said.

That was all.

Behind me, Delilah's voice. She had followed me into the house. "Father, we need to lock her in her room. She'll try to run."

"Lyra," my father said, his eyes on me but not seeing me, "you understand what would happen if I refused the King's tribute. The whole household would be punished."

"You have been chosen."

I stared at him.

"Father." I was not begging. I wanted to be sure of that later. "Father, I am your daughter."

"Guards," he said, without raising his voice.

Two of them came in from the hall. They had been standing there the whole time. They had been waiting for him to call them.

"Take my daughter to her room and lock the door."

"Father—"

"She is not to leave it until the Dragon Court arrives."

One of the guards put his hand on my arm. I did not pull away. I looked at my father, and I looked at Ethan, who had appeared in the doorway behind Delilah, and I looked at my stepsister with her hand still resting protectively over the child she was about to use to bury me.

I had spent twenty years loving these people.

Not one of them had ever loved me back.

The guard's grip tightened. I let him turn me toward the hall. At the door I stopped, and I looked over my shoulder at my father one more time, because I needed to see his face when I said it.

"I hope you remember this," I said.

He did not look up.

The guards led me out.